With the “functional training craze” still in full swing many people are getting too caught up in all the fancy stuff and forgetting what really works.

In the gym last week I watched a guy lifting weights whilst standing on a swiss ball for his entire workout.

Unless he was looking to improve his skateboarding skills (which I doubt) there really is no point spending an entire workout balancing.

Don’t get caught up in the fads, for the average person training on your feet with free weights is a much more functional way to train.

95% of people have one goal – to look better naked, spending an hour balancing on a ball isn’t gonna make that happen.

Unless your No.1 goal is to get better at balancing leave this form of training to the circus acts. Balance training is not the most effective way to make you lose weight, tone up or get stronger.

If you want to change your body you have to force it to change, whether you would like lose unwanted weight or increase the size of your muscles you need to lift a heavy enough to force your muscles to adapt - which will in turn make your muscles become leaner and stronger.

If you are standing on 1 leg or trying to balance on something there’s no way you can lift enough weight for this to happen.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying balance training doesn’t have it’s place, but the majority of balance training should be focusing on working the core. The total time spent swiss/bosu ball should only be a small percentage of your entire workout.

Stick with the basics, Always perform large compound exercises, which are exercise’s that use multiple muscles at one time, use free weights standing up and train movement patterns instead of body-parts.
Incorporate everyday movements into you strength training routine where you;

Bend
Lunge
Squat
Push
Pull
Twist

You’ll get significantly better results in a much shorter amount of time!

Train Hard!

Dan Clay

www.dangerouslyfitpersonaltraining.com
www.personaltrainersydney.com